Prosecutors Deny Lindh Was in Poor State When He Spoke

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: July 2, 2002

WASHINGTON, July 1—
Federal prosecutors today angrily denounced claims by John Walker Lindh that he was kept in ''torturous conditions'' by United States special forces when he made incriminating statements about his activities as a Taliban soldier.

Instead, the prosecutors said, Mr. Lindh was ''meticulously attended to'' by doctors, given food and a safe place to sleep, and ''ultimately returned unharmed, healthy and strong to the country he had forsaken.''

The jousting over how coherent Mr. Lindh was and whether he was given all the rights to which he was entitled is part of a legal battle over whether his statements to the authorities and in an interview televised on CNN may be used against him.

Both sides appear to agree that the statements are highly incriminating for Mr. Lindh, a 21-year-old from California who is charged with conspiring to kill Americans and supporting foreign terrorist organizations.

He has pleaded not guilty to all counts; if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The dozens of pages the government filed today in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where Mr. Lindh is on trial, expressed unusual anger for a legal pleading.

''Indeed, what Lindh never acknowledges -- let alone takes responsibility for -- is that it is his own astoundingly bad decisions and circumstances about which he so now loudly complains,'' the prosecutors wrote. ''Had Lindh not thrown in his lot with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he would not have found himself in November 2002, retreating with his Taliban and al Qaeda brethren.''

The prosecutors added, ''Lindh had to take extraordinary measures to insert himself into this war and this conspiracy, and he should not now be heard to complain that life on the battlefield was unpleasant.''

The government was responding to an account filed last month by Mr. Lindh's lawyers that complained he was delirious and debilitated when taken into custody and interrogated -- and that he was not advised of his legal rights as an American citizen.

Mr. Lindh's trial is to begin on Aug. 26, but a hearing on his motion to suppress his incriminating statements is scheduled for July 15. The decision will be made by Judge T. S. Ellis III of Federal District Court, who is presiding at the trial.

If the statements are suppressed, it will be a severe blow to the government's case.

In their filings last month, lawyers for Mr. Lindh also presented an unusually evocative brief in the form of a narrative that detailed his movements and activities until his arrest and arraignment.

According to that account, Mr. Lindh was wounded, starved, frozen and exhausted when he made the statements to officials and a freelancer for CNN about his activities. He was portrayed by his lawyers as shocked into near silence by the deaths he witnessed in a battered mud fort in northern Afghanistan.

It was in this state, his lawyers said, that he was captured and interrogated by American military officials without having a lawyer present.

But the prosecutors said Mr. Lindh declined to take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity when he refused to answer questions from Johnny Micheal Spann, a Central Intelligence Agency officer who was killed in a prison uprising moments afterward.

''Lindh knew he was being asked to choose sides,'' the government said. ''He could either stay silent and thereby maintain his devotion and commitment to his Al Qaeda and Taliban brothers and their despicable objectives, or he could choose to be an American. He chose silence.''

As for his remarks to CNN and investigators, the prosecutors argued that Lindh was not coerced into talking, but was, instead, eager to tell his story to anyone in the days after his capture.